Howdy folks,M12 is now in Gatherer (well, partially so far), prerelease is tomorrow. Time for this thread.

The rules:1) Tell me what you consider to be the best card(s) for multiplayer in M12. Which card do you want sixteen copies of? Which card is going to tear your meta apart?2) I'll keep tally here.3) I vote first. Because I'm a dictator or something.

My vote - I have to go with Adaptive Automaton here. I'm going to see it far too much, and I'm going to want fourteen of my own. Sure, it's not going to shatter my meta, but it's going to help produce some fun decks.

At $2.50 CDN a piece, Sundial of the Infinite is the biggest steal I've ever seen. I might even have to pre-order them. This card is the stone-cold nuts, I mean it breaks so many cards in two. Given that it's an artifact, and given that no one values it yet, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND that people try to pick these up while you still can. You will never see a card like this again; this will be a $10.00 card like Crucible of Worlds in no time. But yeah, this gets my vote.

I'm going to go with non-planeswalkers, and something that will look to be in a price range that I can afford to buy, namely 5 dollars or less, and if its going to cost several dollars it needs to have a game defining effect. Thats why a card that I think is great and looks like tons of fun, Skinshifter, probably won't make any of my decks until it rotates standard.

I'm going to go with non-planeswalkers, and something that will look to be in a price range that I can afford to buy, namely 5 dollars or less, and if its going to cost several dollars it needs to have a game defining effect. Thats why a card that I think is great and looks like tons of fun, Skinshifter, probably won't make any of my decks until it rotates standard.

Doubling Chant doesn't immediately win the game unless you have other cards out, like Concordant Crossroads. It's not really on the same level as the cards you mentioned. It's also makes your deck incredibly weak to mass removal, because one WoG can take half of it out. I can just imagine casting Life's Finale after you use this card lol.

Doubling Chant doesn't immediately win the game unless you have other cards out, like Concordant Crossroads. It's not really on the same level as the cards you mentioned. It's also makes your deck incredibly weak to mass removal, because one WoG can take half of it out. I can just imagine casting Life's Finale after you use this card lol.

Control is the key of a mill deck. You should free up your mana as much as possible so that you can respond to whatever your opponent is doing. Having some way to remove threats, both real and percieved, is necessary to survival. Real threats are those that are already on the field, and are something a simple unsummon or doom blade can remove. Percieved threats are those that aren't on the field, something a simple duress or counterspell can deal with. Controlling the board will allow your mill deck to continuously perform, if you use permanent style mill, that is.
One-Shot Mill spells are something you should avoid. You can toss tome scours at your opponent until your hand runs out, but that isn't going to be enough to mill them to death. With 1-shot mill spells, like tome scour, you have to treat them like burn spells. Therefore, the only "good" 1-shot mill spells are sanity grinding (in the right deck) and mind funeral. Try to find more permanent styles of milling, like memory erosion, hedron crab, and curse of the bloody tome, so that you don't have to waste your mana each turn doing something that those permanents can do with a single mana/turn investment. Keeping your mana open allows you to respond with control elements.
​Traumatize Rant​. Traumatize is a terrible card for a multitude of reasons. First, it costs 5 to cast, which is a large investment for a mill deck. Milling half a library sounds neat, but if you do the math, it really isn't that much. An average 60 card deck starts with drawing 7 cards. Then, barring any draw spells on their end, or ramp on yours, 5 turns will go by, where they draw 5 more cards, leaving 48 in the deck. Unless they had a deck with more than 60 cards, or you ramped it out, the most you'll ever mill with a single Traumatize on turn 5 is 24 cards. That's not too shabby, but hang on, there's more! If they drew any additional cards or if they were milled before turn 5, that number will be much lower. In addition, any more Traumatize's you draw will only mill less and less as the game goes on...which is the point of a mill deck. My whole point on Traumatize is the it is NOT worth the 5 mana investment, not even with haunting echoes. You can mill more than 24 before turn 5...which you can then cast the echoes.
If you look at a mill deck like a burn deck, you'll notice that it takes longer to win with mill than with burn. For example, lightning bolt costs 1 and does 3 out of the 20 damage needed to win (barring any lifegain or damage prevention). For mill, that same investment of 1 would have to mill 9 cards out of an average 60 card deck to be the equivilent of lightning bolt. The problem is that there is no mill card that can do that...except hedron crab, over a period of time. The initial investment of 1 will pay off in 3 more land drops to make the crab equal to a bolt. However, the crab nets you more mill beyond those 3 land drops, making it better as the game draws on. Other cards, like curse of the bloody tome, are excellent ways of milling an opponent because the initial investment of is all you have to pay in order to put your opponent on a clock. All you have to do is stay alive, which is the true goal of a mill strategy.
There are other ideas for mill decks that are specific to certain types of strategies. Combo mill decks can mill an entire player's library out from under them. Secondary mill strategies are usually tied to another strategy, like drowner of secrets in a merfolk deck, or halimar excavator in an ally deck. Milling can be done in certain decks that are able to ramp out enough mana to make use of the higher costing mill spells, like using 16 post to pay for X on sands of delirium or for ambassador laquatus. Multiplayer mill decks are even tougher to build, but can be done. Being a slower environment, it is easier to ramp in multiplayer, allowing for big X spells, like mind grind, to be useful. Consuming aberration is another star player. The more straightforward strategy is to use mesmeric orb and dreamborn muse while being the only deck at the table that can deal with it. There are always new strategies coming out with each set, so check gatherer for any new mill cards that you find to be the most fun for you!
Now you can say that you haven't fallen into the trap that most new players fall into when they build their first mill deck!

The best card is probably Sundial of the Infinite, because as Tich says it does something that big, and unusual.I want 16 copies of Swiftfoot Boots. Mostly, because it will be easy to obtain 16 or so copies as an uncommon, and it is a really good card.

In terms of sheer fun value, one copy of Worldslayer can wreak all kinds of havoc on everyone. You equip it to a creature, you attack someone who's defenseless or can't block the creature (equip it to something with a landwalk and attack someone of that color, for instance). That resets the ENTIRE board, including lands. Five turns later, you equip it to something else, repeat and laugh hysterically.

It's not the best multiplayer card. It will make everyone hate you which is the worst strategical move in Multiplayer. But it sure is fun.

I find the set to be pretty terrible overall, incredibly uninspired. So far I haven't seen M12 incorporated into a single multiplayer deck, be it here or on MTGSalvation. No impact on my personal meta either.

The best thing to come out of M12 will be titans post rotation. Everyone will be able to get them cheap, and they're decent creatures to field in multiplayer. Among the top 25 creatures for each color anyways.

I find the set to be pretty terrible overall, incredibly uninspired. So far I haven't seen M12 incorporated into a single multiplayer deck, be it here or on MTGSalvation. No impact on my personal meta either.

The best thing to come out of M12 will be titans post rotation. Everyone will be able to get them cheap, and they're decent creatures to field in multiplayer. Among the top 25 creatures for each color anyways.

But yeah, I found that M12 has had 0 impact thusfar.

That I have to agree with.I'm about to roll out a deck featuring theEmpiresplayset, just to see if it works, but even that's probably in the shell of an old deck.

But I guess that's what a core set should mostly be about - giving you the standard cards to augment your decks, while the blocks give you the cards to actually build decks around. Though I agree with you, I'd like to see more "build around me" cards.

I agree that there are no truly good multiplayer cards in M12. I love Chandra's Phoenix and I will be getting a playset for my Chandra deck soon (Chandra, the Firebrand is a bit too expensive atm) but beyond that there are no cards I have bought or am planning to buy for my multiplayer decks.

Maybe we can all blame the commander decks realesed just before M12 but since I love that product and the new cards presented there I won't go so far as to badmouth the commander decks because they caused less multiplayer goodies in M12.

Kamikazegerbil wrote:
Coke Spill
Level 1 Encounter Attack Power
Trigger: You must be pouring yourself a drink
Range: Close Blast 1D10 from Player
Target: All creatures and objects within blast
Attack: Any vs. Reflex
Hit: 1d6 Fizzy damage and target is wet (save ends)
Aftereffect: Target is sticky (save ends)

Timely Reinforcements is a halfway decent card that is being played in top tier standard midrange and control decks to survive against aggro and beatdown decks.

In multiplayer there is a greater chance of it giving both goodies but it still has flaws:If you are ahead, it does nothing. This isn't neccesarily a bad thing because win more cards (the exact opposite) are bad so some will say this is good but a card that does nothing at any given time in a game that you want to win is never good. I will try to clarify that too long sentence a bit: A Wrath of God also does nothing if you are loosing to a creatureless board but it isn't a bad card because that hardly ever happens. If you are going to win, you should be ahead at any given time and at that time a Wrath of God generally still does something (eventhough you generally don't play it because it will destroy your lead) but Timely reinforcements at that time does nothing (even if you wanted it too do something).

If you are losing and behind on life and creatures, you will generally not mind topdecking this. But it is generally not a solution to your problem. 3 1/1's aren't going to stop that Akroma, Angel of Wrath or most simpler critters. You can chump block some units but it still generally doesn't get rid of the cause of the problem. Something mass removal or any kind of removal / big critter does do.

In other words: this card generally doens't help you win. It just makes you not loose a little bit longer but in multiplayer every round the game goes on your opponents are drawing more cards combined than you, they have more combined mana available, etc, etc so unless you have a long long game plan for surviving all those extra resources of your opponents you shouldn't make the game go on longer than neccesary.

Lastly I would not play this card 4 times in a deck (unless I am playing a 1vs1 tournament and then only after sideboarding against aggro decks). Multiples of this card can be even deader for a long time than a doubly drawn legendary permanent. Yes, both often eventually become usefull but a card that is dead for any amount of time is something I prefer to prevent.

I find it cool that they printed this card because it is a cool card with great flavour and style. It is great in midrange and control decks in 1v1 but in multiplayer I don't think it shines even brighter.

Kamikazegerbil wrote:
Coke Spill
Level 1 Encounter Attack Power
Trigger: You must be pouring yourself a drink
Range: Close Blast 1D10 from Player
Target: All creatures and objects within blast
Attack: Any vs. Reflex
Hit: 1d6 Fizzy damage and target is wet (save ends)
Aftereffect: Target is sticky (save ends)